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Perfectly Lucky

The San Francisco Giants’s Matt Cain threw a perfect game last night. Twenty-seven up, twenty-seven down. Not a single man reached first base.

It was a night of great pitching performances. When I went to bed, two brilliant games had been thrown. Lance Lynn, of the St. Louis Cardinals, had racked up twelve strikeouts in a little more than seven innings. R.A. Dickey, of the New York Mets, had tossed a twelve-strikeout one-hitter. I woke up this morning to discover that both had been topped.

Fans will only remember the Cain game. And they should remember it—the perfect game is an incredible feat. It’s only happened twenty-two times in Major League Baseball history. But in the chatter surrounding last night’s gem—ESPN was abuzz Thursday morning with commentators saying how it, combined with the four other perfect games thrown since 2009, shows we’re in a new “Age of the Pitcher”—we can’t forget how imperfect a metric the perfect game is.

For every legend who has thrown a perfect game—Cy Young, Sandy Koufax, and Randy Johnson come to mind—there’s a no-name who would’ve been lost in obscurity were it not for their one moment of immortality. (Do Charlie Robertson, Len Barker, and Mike Witt ring any bells?) That’s part of the beauty of the accomplishment—it can come out of the blue and happen to the greatest pitcher in the game, like Koufax, or to a player starting just their fifth career game, like Robertson. But it’s also evidence that skill is only part of the equation: you also need luck, and plenty of it.

What history will forget is that we almost had two perfect games last night. Dickey came a couple botched plays away from matching Cain—a misplayed barehander by David Wright in the first inning (it was scored an infield single), and a ninth-inning throwing error, also by Wright. Neither were Dickey’s fault. But he got unlucky with his infield defense, and now his otherwise magnificent game will enter the long list of near misses. Meanwhile, Dickey’s teammate, Johan Santana, is in the record books as the only Met to ever throw a no-hitter, even though he pitched a worse game. (He walked five, struck out eight, and needed one hundred and thirty-four pitches to do it. And, of course, a little bit of luck.)

While fate betrayed Dickey, it blessed Cain. A line-drive down the right-field line that turned foul by just a couple of inches. Two incredible catches by his outfielders that, nine times out of ten—a fielder in the wrong spot? a sudden gust of wind?—might have fallen for hits.

Commentators are right to herald this as a new “Age of the Pitcher.” But the harbinger isn’t the glut of perfect games we’ve had recently. A streak like this isn’t unprecedented. From 1988 to 1991, a time not particularly notable for pitching prowess, two perfectos were thrown, by names you probably don’t recall—Tom Browning and Dennis Martinez. In that same span, another three mostly anonymous pitchers—Ron Robinson, Dave Stieb, and Brian Holman—lost their perfect games on the last batter. That three-year period was just a few strokes of dumb luck away from being as prolific a streak of perfection as today.

Still, we are in an era of pitching dominance, thanks to a combination of reasons. With more aggressive testing for performance-enhancing drugs, hitters are no longer juiced. Meanwhile, pitchers, thanks to better, more aggressive coaching starting at younger ages, are stronger than ever. It’s a lucky time to be a pitcher.